SOMETIMES one comes across a piece of writing so exquisite that reading it causes the heart to ache. Such is Dream Pedlary by Thomas Lovell Beddoes which appeared in an anthology of poems that I studied in Secondary school. Even at the thoughtless age of 13, I could sense the beauty of language and pathos in the lyrical lines which played continually in my mind until today, half a century later.

Dream Pedlary is one of about a dozen poems that have become so ingrained in my memory that they constitute what I call my literary DNA. Recently, a friend asked me to write some lines for his company to help sell their herbal and tonic products as part of their Mother’s Day promotion (May 2013). As he talked, some lines from Dream Pedlary, together with the lyrics of a song, Perhaps Love, flashed through my mind. The promotional text I dashed out for him was:

What would you bid

For Mother’s Love?

What is mother’s love? Some say it is a resting place and refuge, to give you comfort and keep you warm. And as in an old song, the memory of mother’s love will bring you home.

If Mother’s love is up for auction, what would you bid? A passing bell, a light sigh, a wish that all is well with Mother.

So this Mother’s Day, warm her heart with a hug and a thoughtful gift.

Thomas Lovell Beddoes (June 30, 1803 – January 26, 1849) was an English physician, poet and dramatist. Much of his work shows a preoccupation with death. In 1824, he went to Göttingen to study medicine, motivated by the hope of discovering physical evidence of a human spirit which survives the death of the body. He was expelled, and then went to Würzburg to complete his training.

He wandered about practising medicine, writing poetry and expounding democratic theories which got him into trouble. He was deported from Bavaria in 1833, and had to leave Zürich, where he had settled, in 1840.

He led an itinerant life after leaving Switzerland, returning to England only in 1846, before going back to Germany. He became increasingly disturbed, and committed suicide by poison at Basel in 1849, at age 45.